The Twittersphere is Dominated By Less than One Percent of Twitter Users

A Yahoo Research study found that only 20,000 people are pretty much responsible for half of all tweets on Twitter. How many of those people actually make up Twitter’s user base? Less than one percent.

Over a billion tweets pass through Twitter each week, but the study only analyzed a select sample of 260 million tweets. Half of those tweets came from “elite” users, consisting of “media, celebrities, organizations and bloggers.”

Then there’s “ordinary” users like Grandpa Jack and Aunt Vicky, who frankly, probably aren’t getting a lot of followers, but do like to follow Ashton Kutcher. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, the study found that famous people like to follow famous people, and writers follow other writers.

Erica Ho likes to proclaim herself as an “ordinary user” on Twitter. Follow her at @ericamho.